Matthew Halsall - On The Go

Miles Davis-inspired jazz trumpeter delivers accomplished third album as band leader

(Gondwana Records)

I first heard this Manchester trumpeter through his impressive work on saxophonist Nat Birchall’s Guiding Spirit, and this album – actually his third as leader – lives up to expectation. Birchall returns the favour here, and the rhythm section grooves effectively.

Halsall cites Miles Davis’s improvised-in-the-studio soundtrack for Louis Malle’s 1958 film Lift to the Scaffold as an inspiration, and creates a shifting scenario that takes in the bop-influenced ‘Music for a Dancing Mind’ and ‘The Move’, the poignant ‘Song for Charlie’, the Buddhist-inspired pairing of the Coltrane-ish ‘The End of Dukkha’ and ‘Samatha’ (with additional harp), and the bouncy ‘The Journey Home’.